News in Brief

Date: 14 April 2019 - 21:38

News ID: ۶۴۸۳۱

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Minority Shia Hazaras blocked traffic in a sit-in protest for a third day in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Sunday after a suicide bomb killed 19 people in an outdoor market, many of them ethnic Hazaras.
Dozens were wounded in the blast on Friday on the outskirts of Quetta, capital of resource-rich Baluchistan province, officials said. Daesh claimed responsibility.
Hazaras have been frequently targeted by Taliban and Daesh militants and other Takfiri groups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"We’ve lost hundreds of our loved ones in the last 10 years,” Tahir Hazara, leading the sit-in, told Reuters. "The government failed to protect our community. Terrorists are free to target us.”
"Stop killing Hazaras,” the crowd chanted. "Down with terrorism and sectarianism.”
The protesters, who include many women and children, have set up camps and burn wood to keep warm at night. One police official said there were about 200 people taking part on Sunday, blocking the key arterial Western Bypass leading into Quetta.

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CAIRO (Reuters) -- The president of Egypt met on Sunday in Cairo with the commander of eastern Libyan forces who is under international pressure to halt an advance on the capital Tripoli.
Egypt has close ties with Khalifa Haftar, whose Libyan National Army (LNA) controls the east and took the mainly desert south earlier this year before moving to Tripoli ten days ago in a major escalation of conflict in the divided nation.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi met Haftar to discuss developments in Libya, Sisi’s spokesman said.
Egypt released photos showing Haftar sitting with Sisi and his head of intelligence, Abbas Kamel.
No other details about the meeting were immediately available from either party.
Haftar’s move on Libya is the latest and potentially most significant development in a cycle of conflict and anarchy since the 2011 topping of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -- A drive-by shooting outside a nightclub in the Australian city of Melbourne inflicted "horrific injuries” that killed a security guard and wounded three men, police said on Sunday, but there was no suggestion yet that the attack was terror-related.
Australia has some of the world’s toughest gun control laws, adopted after its worst mass murder, when a gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur in the island state of Tasmania in 1996.
Sunday’s shooting took place around 3.20 a.m. in the lively entertainment district of Melbourne’s southeastern suburb of Prahran, police said.
Three security guards and a man queueing to enter were taken to hospital with gunshot injuries, police said in a televised news conference in Melbourne.
One guard died in hospital, another man was in critical condition and two escaped life-threatening injuries. One guard was shot in the face, the Age newspaper said.

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MANILA (Reuters) -- Philippine officials on Sunday confirmed that a leader of an alliance of pro-Daesh militants was one of four insurgents killed in a clash with the military last month.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana confirmed Abu Dar’s death based on the findings of a DNA test.
"It is confirmed, it’s Abu Dar’s remains,” he said. Security forces believe Abu Dar had led Dawla Islamiya, an alliance of pro-Daesh fighters in southern Philippines that include foreigners.
The four rebels were killed in a clash in Lanao del Sur province in March.
Major-General Roberto Ancan, commander of the army’s 1st Infantry Division, also confirmed Dar’s death.
He called it a "significant accomplishment of the government and the people of Lanao del Sur who worked together to rid their beloved province of terrorists”.
Dawla Islamiya carried out the siege of southern Marawi City for five months in 2017 before some leaders were reported killed by the military in airstrikes and street battles, among them Isnilon Hapilon, Daesh’s anointed "emir” in Southeast Asia.
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MADRID (Reuters) -- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who faces a national election in two weeks’ time, has said he will act with "strength and proportion” against any attempt by Catalan separatists to repeat their 2017 independence bid.
Catalonia’s failed attempt to secede from Spain and Madrid’s approach to the region has become the defining issue ahead of the April 28 election, in which polls show a coalition of right-wing, unionist parties could seize a majority in parliament.
"If we see the laws of the constitution or the Statute of Autonomy in Catalonia broken once more, the state of law led by this government will act with strength and proportion against any challenge,” Sanchez said in an interview published in Hoy newspaper.
In such an event, Sanchez suggested he could apply direct rule to Catalonia, repeating the decision of former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy who took over the regional government during the secession crisis in 2017.

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BERLIN (AP) — Some 600 people have been evacuated from their homes in the old city of Frankfurt so specialists could remove a World War II-era bomb that was discovered in the Main River.
The German news agency dpa reported the bomb was defused, as planned, underwater on Sunday, which led to a loud detonation and a big water fountain on the river. Police told dpa "the bomb is no longer a danger.”
Firefighters had discovered the American 250-kilogram (550-pound) bomb during diving training in the river on Tuesday.
Even more than 70 years after the end of the war, bombs and other munitions still turn up regularly in Germany, a testament to the ferocity of the fighting in World War II.